At its first time at the swimwear show in Huntington Beach, Lightspeed Commerce saw wholesale turn faster, more data-driven and less seasonal. Here’s how in-person events and connected tools are helping swim, active and resort brands move from insight to order to replenishment.
Collective Shows isn’t your typical trade show.
Held at the beachfront Paséa Hotel & Spa in Huntington Beach, California in July, it’s a curated, intimate gathering designed to bring together the brands, buyers and wholesale leaders shaping the swimwear, activewear and resort wear industries.
With retailers and buying teams from names like Bloomingdale’s, Scheels, Shopbop, ASOS, Rosewood Hotels and Pacific Hospitality Group, alongside brands including Beyond Yoga, Varley, Rhone and Sweaty Betty, the show delivered the kind of high-quality mix that reinforces its elevated positioning.
This year marked Lightspeed’s first time attending, including sponsorship of the event’s main runway, where models showcased the looks consumers will be buying next season. Beyond the visibility, the experience offered a firsthand look at where wholesale is heading and what retailers and brands are doing to keep pace with a market that’s moving faster than ever.
Collective Shows as a Meeting Point for Wholesale Leaders
Trade shows have long served as the connective tissue of retail. They’re where assortments take shape, relationships are built and new brands earn their first placements on a buyer’s radar. Collective Shows leans into that function while adding a layer of editorial curation that sets it apart from larger, more conventional events.
For smaller and mid-sized retailers in particular, shows like this remain one of the primary avenues for discovering and vetting new brands. With tight profit margins and ongoing cash flow pressures, many of these retailers are being more deliberate about who they do business with. Establishing direct relationships at in-person events helps reduce risk on both sides of the transaction.
Lightspeed chose to engage with this community now because the show represents the kind of ecosystem it wants to be part of: brands and retailers working toward growth and deeper impact. It also gave the Lightspeed team a direct line to industry conversations, offering perspective on the evolving retail landscape that you can’t get from a report.
“The quality of the conversations at the show was refreshingly candid. Retailers and brands weren’t just talking about products — they were talking about how to build stronger, more resilient businesses together. That’s exactly the kind of dialogue we want to be part of,” says Marie Baldauf-Lenschen, Senior Director, Wholesale Network at Lightspeed.
What the Industry Is Telling Us About Wholesale Right Now
Wholesale is becoming less seasonal and more reactive.
“The days when a retailer could rely on upfront seasonal assortment orders and let them run through the season are largely behind us,” explains Baldauf-Lenschen. “Demand has grown harder to predict, weather continues to influence buying behavior in meaningful ways and retailers are under real pressure to clear inventory before the next season arrives.”
The result is a buying environment defined by frequency, speed and tight margins. Retailers are placing smaller, more targeted orders and expecting faster turnaround. They’re also becoming more data-driven, using sales and stock reports to make more deliberate purchasing decisions. Brands, in turn, are being asked to offer better visibility into inventory and lead times.
The data reflects this shift.
“Retailers using Lightspeed Insights achieved a 25.4% higher gross margin return on investment1, translating to $4,457 more in gross profit per month based on typical inventory values2,” Baldauf-Lenschen said. “Retailers with Lightspeed Insights also experienced 26% fewer days out of stock for top-selling items3.”
“The features of Lightspeed that we use the most are daily reports on what items we’re selling,” said Carson Searcy, Co-owner of CBS Sports, which relies on Lightspeed’s reporting tools to track purchasing trends. “For example, are we selling men’s running shoes or women’s hiking boots? That gives us the opportunity to forecast for the future.”
Retailers don’t need complex forecasting models to see improvements in reorder timing. Tracking straightforward metrics, including average weekly sales, current inventory on hand, estimated supplier lead time and recent sales trends, can make a meaningful difference in how quickly and accurately a business responds to demand signals.
The Shift Toward Connected Wholesale
The broader industry shift isn’t about abandoning the practices that have made wholesale work for decades. It’s about connecting those practices to better data and more efficient workflows.
For many retailers and brands, that means reducing the manual steps involved in placing and receiving orders.
Lisa Bobb, owner of Squash Blossom Boutique and a Lightspeed customer, noted that she can place orders using Lightspeed Wholesale in a fraction of the time it used to take. Orders include product information and photos directly, which means she can instantly start selling the product as soon the boutique receives it, rather than waiting before the product is set up in the POS and ecommerce system. According to Bobb, orders placed through Lightspeed Wholesale take 80% less time than they did previously.
Lightspeed Wholesale operates as a B2B commerce network connecting more than 4,000 brands on NuORDER with customers on Lightspeed POS. For retailers, this means sourcing products and getting them onto the shelf faster, with wholesale functionality built directly into the point-of-sale system rather than managed as a separate workflow.
The goal isn’t to replace the relationships that trade shows facilitate, but to support what happens after those relationships are established: the ordering, the replenishment and the day-to-day communication between brands and their retail partners.
Why In-Person Events Still Matter
Even as wholesale tools become increasingly digital, physical market events continue to play a distinct role in discovery and relationship-building. Collective Shows sits at an intersection that’s difficult to replicate online: community, commerce and collaboration happening in the same room, at the same time.
For Lightspeed, sponsoring the main runway was a way to reinforce investment in the creative and retail ecosystem, rather than participating at the edges of it. These events also create opportunities for teams to learn directly from the people navigating the market every day, whether that’s a buyer managing a lean open-to-buy or a brand trying to expand into new doors without overextending.
As Baldauf-Lenschen puts it, “The strength of wholesale and retail has always been rooted in community. Bringing brands, retailers and partners together in one place sparks ideas, builds relationships and creates opportunities that are difficult to recreate anywhere else.”
The Future Is Connected, Not Complicated
Wholesale is becoming more responsive, more data-informed and more collaborative. The direction of that change points toward connection rather than complexity.
Alignment between digital workflow and physical retail is where the industry is heading. Stronger coordination between brands and retailers, faster movement from insight to order to replenishment, and technology that supports decision-making rather than complicates it.
Lightspeed’s first Collective Shows experience reinforced what the industry has been showing for some time: wholesale doesn’t need to be reinvented. It needs to be better connected.
Supporting article images: Article supporting images
Accompanying banner ads:
- Asset: Banner ads
- UTM link: https://www.lightspeedhq.com/pos/retail/B2B-wholesale-platform/?utm_campaign=FY27-Q2-FNF-Brand&utm_medium=media-buy&utm_source=rtp&utm_content=post-collective-article
Footnotes:
- 125.4% represents the difference in gross margin return on investment (“GMROI”) between (1) customers actively using Insights to drive their replenishment ordering and (2) those who have access, but are not actively using Insights. Specifically, over the three months ended December 31, 2024, the median merchant in the sample group (1) achieved a GMROI of $0.79 which is 25.4% higher than the median merchant in the sample group (2) of $0.63. Results outside such samples could vary depending on locations and other factors.
- 2$13,373 represents the quarterly (and $4,457 the monthly) estimated gross profit difference between (1) customers actively using Insights to drive their replenishment ordering and (2) those who have access, but are not actively using Insights. This is calculated by multiplying the respective sample groups median GMROI by the median inventory value held by Lightspeed merchants in the three months ended December 31, 2024 and then taking the difference. Results outside such samples could vary depending on locations and other factors.
- 3Top selling items means the top 5% of SKUs (by way of revenue) over the analysis period (the three months ended December 31, 2024). 26% represents the difference in proportion of days out of stock between (1) customers with access to Insights and (2) a cohort of similar sized merchants who do not have access to Insights. Specifically, the median of sample group (1) experienced stockouts 20% of the time, whereas the median of sample group (2) experienced stockouts 27% of the time. Results outside such samples could vary depending on locations and other factors.
